Remembering Ramanujan: India Celebrates Its Famous Mathematical Son

India, home of the number zero, ends a yearlong math party in unique fashion

By Evelyn Lamb

PORTRAIT OF A GENIUS: Srinivasa Ramanujan, Indian mathematician, was born December 22, 1887. Image: Konrad Jacobs, Oberwolfach Photo Collection

December 22, 2012, marks the 125th anniversary of the birth of legendary Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan. An intuitive mathematical genius, Ramanujan's discoveries have influenced several areas of mathematics, but he is probably most famous for his contributions to number theory and infinite series, among them fascinating formulas ( pdf ) that can be used to calculate digits of pi in unusual ways.

Last December Prime Minister Manmohan Singh declared 2012 to be a National Mathematics Year in India in honor of Ramanujan's quasiquicentennial. Ramanujan's story is dramatic and somewhat larger than life. It is even the subject of an opera by Indian-German composer Sandeep Bhagwati, a novel and two plays . Largely self-taught, he dropped out of college, took a job as a clerk in Madras and attracted the attention of British mathematician G. H. Hardy through written correspondence in 1913. Although Ramanujan's mother believed that as a Brahmin (the highest class in the Indian caste system, which was in place at the time) he should not travel overseas, Ramanujan, aged 27, went to England in 1914 and spent the ensuing war years working with Hardy and other mathematicians? at the University of Cambridge. He grew quite ill in England, and in 1919 he returned to India where he died in 1920. Since his death at age 32 mathematicians have analyzed his notebooks ( pdf ), which are full of formulas but light on justification. Most of the formulas have turned out to be correct, and researchers continue to learn from his work while trying to understand and prove them.

India's mathematical heritage extends far beyond Ramanujan's time. The nation is considered home of the concept of zero. Babylonians had used a space as a placeholder (similar to the role of "0" in the number 101), but this space could not stand alone or at the end of a number. (In our number system, as in theirs, this could be problematic; imagine trying to tell the difference between the numbers 1 and 10 by context alone.) In India, however, zero was treated as a number like any other. India is also the home of our decimal numeral system.

Indian government and mathematical societies pursued several projects to celebrate their year of mathematics, from enrichment programs for students and teachers to the "Mathematical Panorama Lectures" that occurred around the country. This series of 20 short lecture courses, which will continue into 2013, brings prominent mathematicians from different fields to Indian universities to deliver five or six lectures. M. S. Raghunathan, president of the Ramanujan Mathematical Society and chair of the organizing committee for the National Mathematics Year, wrote in an e-mail that he hopes the lectures will facilitate an infusion of Indian talent into fields that lack it right now.

Indeed, a primary purpose of the year of mathematics is to reinvigorate mathematical education in India. In his speech announcing the event, Prime Minister Singh said that although India has produced many distinguished mathematicians, "for a country of our size, the number of competent mathematicians that we have is badly inadequate." He mentioned concerns about the rigidity of India?s academic system, which some believe might squelch rather than nurture mathematical curiosity and achievement. "A genius like Ramanujan would shine bright even in the most adverse of circumstances, but we should be geared to encourage and nurture good talent which may not be of the same caliber as that of Ramanujan," he said. Singh also mentioned the need to prevent attrition of mathematically interested people. "There is a general perception in our society that the pursuit of mathematics does not lead to attractive career opportunities," he said. "This perception must change." Lectures for undergraduates, camps for motivated youngsters and educational programs designed to acquaint teachers with new topics and pedagogical ideas have all been part of the attempt to nurture mathematical interest at all levels.

Two longer-term projects begun this year could help as well: a documentary on the history of Indian mathematics and a mathematics museum in Chennai. Raghunathan hopes that the documentary will be available in 2014 and the museum will open its doors in 2015.

This yearlong fete is culminating in "The Legacy of Srinivasa Ramanujan," a conference at the University of Delhi from December 17 to 22. Included are technical lectures on mathematics influenced by Ramanujan's work, public presentations on Ramanujan's notebooks, dance performances and a film about Ramanujan's life. The annual SASTRA Ramanujan Prize, which recognizes a mathematician age 32 or younger who works in a field influenced by Ramanujan, will be awarded as well. The awardee this year is Zhiwei Yun of Stanford University, whose work lies at the intersection of geometric representation theory, algebraic geometry and number theory.

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From Boehner to McConnell (TIME)

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U.S. Shooting Deaths Since Sandy Hook Top 100

WASHINGTON -- The night after Sandy Hook, a gunman pulled behind a car in Kansas City's east side and opened fire, striking 4-year-old Aydan Perea in the head. The boy had just gotten into his father's car.

?He was innocent and he was just lifeless,? said the first bystander to reach Aydan. ?All my life I?ve never seen nothing so devastating. I?m unable to eat, I?m unable to sleep because I see this baby in my head."

It was not the pre-schooler's first brush with gun violence. A year earlier, a gunman fired a shotgun at the house where Aydan had been staying. No one was injured, but bullets shattered a front window and riddled a parked car. This week, days after the drive-by shooting, doctors declared the boy brain dead.

Aydan's mother said her world has "stopped."

In the week following the Sandy Hook massacre, a body was found inside a vacant house, at a car wash, in a bodega. They were discovered on a bike trail, in a backyard, inside the front office of a motel, in an idling Chevy pickup. They were the 67th murder in their city and the 88th and the 124th.

All had one thing in common: the murder weapon. All died from gunshots. Shots to the head. Multiples to the chest. And so on.

This week, as mourners gathered in Newtown, Conn., to bury Sandy Hook Elementary's dead, and a nation renewed its debate over guns, the shootings did not stop. The Huffington Post spent the week tracking gun-related homicides and accidents throughout the U.S., logging more than 100 from Google and Nexis searches. This is by no means a definitive tally. In 2010, there were more than twice that many homicides alone in an average week.

There were murder-suicides. One was shot in the face while sleeping, a baby sound asleep in a crib nearby. One was a grandmother on her way home from a store.

On Saturday afternoon, a 3-year-old in Guthrie, Okla., died after accidentally shooting himself in the head with a gun he found inside his aunt and uncle's house. His uncle is an Oklahoma state trooper.

"Nobody should have to go through something like that," a resident said during a candlelight vigil for the boy. An aunt at the vigil said, "We are all so close to him. My brother here visited him three times a week and my mom babysat him twice a week."

Paul Sampleton Jr., 14, was bound and shot in his Gwinnett County, Ga., townhome on Wednesday afternoon. His father found him in the kitchen. Police suspect a robbery motive.

"He was smiling, listening to music," a friend recalled to a local reporter. "He got on his bus, I got on mine. We were all happy."

A 20-year-old man shot and killed Veronica Soto, a young mother of two, in an apparent road rage incident on Thursday. Soto and her husband had gone out to a nearby Jack in the Box in the Houston area when they became involved in a confrontation with drivers in two other cars. The accused killer Mark Trevino, and the victim's husband pulled guns.

"Investigators said Mark Trevino came to a stop, ran into his home on Addicks-Clodine, grabbed a rifle and started shooting. Soto was shot in the head. Her husband also pulled out his gun. 'They started shooting back and forth and the bullet went through the windshield, hit her and went out the back windshield,' said Matthew Soto, the victim?s brother-in-law," reported a Houston television station.

The station continued: "Soto?s distraught husband drove to his sister-in-law?s house on Las Brisas near Plaza Libre for help, but it was too late. The mother collapsed and died at the scene."

Soto had two daughters, ages 7 and 14. She just turned 30.

In Georgetown, Ohio, a 71-year-old man was arrested on Sunday after shooting his adult son John Louderback in the chest. The sheriff's office said the man called 911 and confessed.

Ramona Foreman was found shot in the doorway of the Oakland, Calif., 92nd Avenue Head Start office. The 48-year-old and her sister were walking home from a store when shots rang out. Foreman had been the innocent victim of a drive-by shooting. The victim's stepdaughter told a reporter that her grandmother was the 13th person she knows killed this year.

Deputy Sheriff Christopher Parsons, 31, worked the early-morning shift on Saturday, when he took an emergency call to assist an unconscious woman at a trailer park in Mineral Point, Mo. As he helped place the woman in the ambulance, her son came out of the mobile home and fired a rifle, killing Parsons.

The deputy had been on the police force for two months. "He had so completely figured things out and had worked so hard," his mother told a reporter.

On Sunday in New Orleans, three people were shot and killed, including 18-year-old Lawrence Burt, 56-year-old Vivian Snyder, and a 56-year-old Jefferson Parish taxi driver Joseph Wilfred, who was shot behind the wheel. According to an account, he'd been on the job for about three weeks.

That same afternoon, 25-year-old Krystal Garcia Nacoa was allegedly shot to death by her husband, Leonardo Nacoa, 26, at their Porterville, Calif., home. Police found the husband's cell phone number and called it multiple times, until the man finally picked up. He admitted that he had fled across the border to Mexico. Police were able to get Nacoa to surrender.

His three young children were inside the home at the time of the shooting and weren't physically hurt.

Mark Hanrahan, Melissa Jeltsen, Alana Horowitz, Benjamin Hart, and Adam Goldberg contributed reporting.

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Source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/12/21/us-shooting-deaths-sandy-hook_n_2348466.html

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The SciFri Book Club Tours 'The Planets'

The SciFri Book Club is touring the solar system, with Dava Sobel's 2005 The Planets. Call in with a review of the book. Plus Jim Green, director of planetary science at NASA, joins the club to give an update on what's happened planet-wise since the book was published.

Source: http://www.npr.org/2012/12/21/167798236/the-scifri-book-club-tours-the-planets?ft=1&f=1007

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Manhunt intensifies for two escaped bank robbers in Chicago

The manhunt for two bank robbers who escaped from a downtown Chicago prison this week intensified overnight, with police chasing multiple leads as new footage shows the men getting into a taxi minutes after their brazen escape.

Investigators say surveillance cameras captured Joseph "Jose" Banks, 37, and Kenneth Conley, 38, getting into a taxi minutes after their early Tuesday escape. They entered the taxi at the intersection of Michigan Avenue and Congress Street, just blocks away from the jail.

The FBI considers them "armed and dangerous."

The men then showed up five hours later at the home of Sandy Conley, Kenneth Conley's mother, in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park, Ill.

"He was in the house for two minutes," Sandy Conley said. "I can't tell you if he was armed. I made him get out."

Thomas Trautmann of the Chicago FBI said the clock is ticking on finding the men.

"[As] each hour goes by, our chances get longer and longer," he said. "However, we do have several viable leads that we are running down."

He did not specify the information.

Banks and Conley were last seen Monday at 10 p.m. during a prison head count at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in downtown Chicago's Loop district. The two borrowed a move from the film "Escape From Alcatraz" by stuffing their beds with clothes in the shape of bodies.

They men then broke the window of their cell at the federal prison, shimmying out a hole only inches wide, and scaled down the side of the building 17 stories, all the while holding onto a rope of sheets and towels taken from the prison. The rope was strong enough to support the two, one weighing 165 pounds the other 185 pounds.

At 7 a.m. the next morning, as employees arrived at work, they noticed the sheets left dangling from the building and at jailers discovered that Conley and Banks were missing.

While the men have had plenty of time to leave the area, there's no indication that they have, ABC 7 TV's public-safety expert Jody Weis said.

"There's a likelihood that they're going to stay here," Weis, a former Chicago police superintendent, said. "They'll have people they can trust. They can have people they can work with. There are going to be people that might be able to hide them out."

Banks, nicknamed "the second-hand bandit" because of the used clothing disguises he wore in several robberies, was convicted of armed robbery last week. His parting words to his judge, Rebecca Pallmeyer, were, "I'll be seeking retribution as well as damages ... you'll hear from me."

Conley had been in jail for several years.

Pallmeyer and others who presided over the men's cases have reportedly been offered protection.

"If they're willing to go down a sheet 17 floors, they're willing to take a chance," Weis said. "And I think you can draw your own conclusion as to what that might mean."

The FBI and U.S. Marshals are offering a combined reward of $60,000 to find the inmates and bring them back into custody.

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Source: http://gma.yahoo.com/footage-shows-escaped-robbers-boarding-cab-123854862--abc-news-topstories.html

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China's Xi gives backing to embattled Hong Kong leader

HONG KONG | Thu Dec 20, 2012 7:14am EST

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Chinese Communist Party chief Xi Jinping gave his backing on Thursday to Hong Kong's embattled leader, Leung Chun-ying, who is under heavy criticism in the territory over unauthorized building works at his home.

Leung narrowly survived a motion of no-confidence this month over the structures at his home that have undermined his integrity and triggered calls for a mass protest on January 1 to lobby for his resignation.

At a meeting in Beijing, Xi appeared to throw his support behind Leung, who was anointed for Hong Kong's top job after being selected by a small body of mostly pro-Beijing elites earlier this year.

"The (Hong Kong) government has done concrete work, it has been proactive and its responsibilities are heavy. The central government endorses the work of the (Hong Kong) government," Xi said in remarks carried on Hong Kong's Cable TV.

Xi added that China's new leadership will not change broad policy directions for Hong Kong and Macau and would uphold the "one country, two systems" principle under which the two territories are allowed to run its own affairs.

Hong Kong and Macau returned to Chinese rule in 1997 and 1999 and promised a high level of autonomy.

Beijing-backed Leung was criticized by pro-democracy lawmakers this month for failing to give a clear account of building works in his hilltop mansion - something he seized upon to oust his rival Henry Tang, when both ran for Hong Kong's chief executive post this year.

In space-starved Hong Kong, embellishments to homes are common to maximize living space, but similar violations have ensnared several prominent officials over the past year.

Leung has endured a difficult half year, wrestling with issues ranging from high property prices and perceived interference from China over education, to grassroots resentment caused by a tide of Chinese visitors and pregnant mainland women cramming maternity wards to gain local citizenship.

(Reporting by Tan Ee Lyn; Editing by Ron Popeski)

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/12/20/us-china-hongkong-idUSBRE8BJ0JS20121220?feedType=RSS&feedName=topNews

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Newtown's agony echoes in Scottish town

Colin McIntosh, a church minister in Dunblane, Scotland, where a gunman shot dead 16 school children in 1996, offers Newtown's grieving families "our deepest sympathy and concern and support."

By Keir Simmons and Yuka Tachibana, NBC News

DUNBLANE, Scotland ? Thousands of miles from Newtown, Conn.,?a lone gunman walked into the elementary school of this Scottish town and murdered 16 children aged 5 and 6 along with their teacher.

That was 17 years ago, but memories of the incident, which led to a total ban on the private ownership of handguns in the U.K.,?are still raw in Dunblane.

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"I have a vivid memory as I arrived at the school of the desperation of parents trying to find out what happened," former police officer Louis Munn told NBC News. "But when I went inside the school it was absolute silence, there was the smell of school lunch in the air and children's coats still hanging on the wall."

Mick North, who lost his daughter Sophie, said: "Children become real people at around 5 years old.?She was taken away so early."

Full coverage of the Connecticut school shooting

"Any shooting is tragic, but this one because of the age and because of the place?is a painful reminder. I can picture myself waiting for the news and I can remember how I reacted."

When there are so many victims, so young, parents find comfort in each other,?he said. ?

Keir Simmons / NBC News

A memorial to the children of Dunblane.

"I can also remember the strength that we gained by meeting with the families," North added.?"We found that we could say things in front of the other families that we could not say even to our closest friends, even to our relatives."

For teachers, school security jumps to forefront after Newtown shootings

Steve Birnie's son was injured in the shooting. ?For him the challenge was to bring up his child amid such heartache.

"All we could do with our kids was be open and answer their questions as honestly as possible," Birnie said.

What happened was hard to comprehend, never mind explain: In March 1996, 43-year-old Thomas Hamilton entered Dunblane Primary School and shot more than a dozen children and a teacher. ?After the murders, Hamilton killed himself. Tennis star Andy Murray, who won two Olympic medals and the U.S. Open this year, was among the children at school that day. ?

The 1996 mass shooting that killed 16 children and their elementary school teacher shattered the security of a Scottish village led to new, stronger gun laws. NBC's Keir Simmons reports.

The country reacted with revulsion and in 1997 laws were passed that essentially made private handgun ownership illegal throughout the United Kingdom.?

'The dreadful void'
Birnie now runs a young people's center, set up with money donated after the shooting. It was intended to provide some normality for children who had seen their community ripped apart.?

This week, members of the community lit candles at the center for the Newtown victims.? A condolence book is filling up with messages.?

Colin McIntosh, minister of Dunblane Cathedral, said he would never forget the week of funerals. He found himself burying children he had?baptized.

Fierce debate after Newtown school shootings: Where was God?

"The week of funerals comes to an end and then the dreadful void," he told NBC News. "What happens now? What are we supposed to do? No one has an answer to that question."

One thing the families did was campaign for more restrictions on guns.?

David Moir / Reuters

A memorial plate with the names of the 1996 Dunblane Primary School shooting victims.

"It wasn't difficult in the U.K. because there were so many people who felt similar," North said. "When families built up enough strength we organised the campaign."

"Had it not been for the parents, handguns would still be legal," ex-police officer?Munn added. ?"It was the parents that changed it. It was people power."

But it's important not to lose focus on the families and the shock and pain they are feeling, McIntosh?said.

"I hesitate at this very early stage for people who are going through traumatic experience to say, 'Yes, you will recover; yes, you will get over this.' But they will, there will be a future, there is hope."

Nervous parents send kids back to school in Newtown?

In a message to Newtown, posted on the cathedral website, he said: "We do not understand a world in which such things can happen. All we can say from experience is that God is not absent in those moments when the worst happens.

"Words themselves seem so inadequate, but we in Dunblane will continue to remember you in our prayers. "

Even after all these years, talking about what happened is difficult for many in Dunblane. But they spoke this week in the hope that it might help those going through the same in Newtown.

There is no standard for school security in this country, but in the wake of the tragic Sandy Hook shooting, there is plenty of talk on what changes schools can make to ensure the safety of their students. NBC's Erica Hill reports.

"I want to send my sympathy and love," North said. ?"Our lives have changed forever, but I want to reassure you that there will be positive things that will come eventually. I can't and will never forget what happened, and it takes time, but strength can come from various places."

Every community is different and will find it's own ways of coping they say.

"We offer our support," Birnie added.?"Dunblane has come through it and I hope Newtown will, too."

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Source: http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/12/19/16008985-sending-sympathy-and-love-newtowns-agony-echoes-in-scottish-town?lite

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